Twitter has blocked access to a neo-Nazi account at the request of the German government.

While the rest of the world will be able to see them, Germans will not. It is the first time the social networking site has implemented its local censorship policy, which came into force in January.

It allows it to block content in specific countries if tweets violate local laws. In Germany you are not allowed to push neo-nazi material on account of a bad experience the nation had when it allowed that sort of thing. Announcing the decision, Twitter's general counsel Alex Macgillivray said: "Never want to withhold content; good to have tools to do it narrowly and transparently."

The site belonged to the organisation Besseres Hannover, (Better Hannover), a right-wing extremist group from Lower Saxony. The group has been officially disbanded, its assets are seized and all its accounts in social networks have to be closed immediately. Twitter said that it works with anti-Nazi organisations and would encourage anyone who finds content like this to report it to Facebook.

Members of the group have been charged with inciting racial hatred and creating a criminal organisation. It is also accused of issuing threats against immigrants and distributing racist pamphlets at schools in Lower Saxony.Lately it sent a threatening video to the state's social affairs minister Aygul Ozkan, a German-born conservative politician whose family comes from Turkey.

A student game developer in Germany is in hot water after releasing a shoot-em-up set in the Cold War.

Jens Stober, a 23-year-old student at the University of Design, Media and Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany, has created a game called "1378 (km)" which is about the wall which divided East Germany from West Germany. You get to play either an East German trying to escape the country by crossing the area known as the "death strip" or play as a guard shooting escapees.

Stober said the games idea was to teach young, tech-savvy Germans about their country's past. He said that becoming an East German escapee or border guard enables players to identify with these figures.

But when Stober unveiled "1378 (km)" last week, the game caused a massive public uproar. Rainer Wagner, who tried to escape from East Germany as a teenager, told Spiegel Online that it was like a punch in the face. "It feels like I'm being shot at again, emotionally," said Wagner. Politicians have called the game "macabre and scandalous," as well as "tasteless and stupid."

University officials have stood behind Stober's game and its ability to work as a teaching tool. Michael Bielicky, a professor who supervised Stober on the project, told Spiegel Online, "Computer games are the ideal medium to reach the younger generation."

Bear in mind that no one who has objected to the game has ever seen it. Those who play guards do not have to shoot escapees, they can also arrest them or even join them in their flight. Those that do shoot the escapees find themselves transported to the future and to a court trial.